


As the sadness of parting proves

by Solshine



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Baudelaires On The Lam, F/M, Spoilers for grim grotto through the Beatrice Letters, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 10:57:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14423952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solshine/pseuds/Solshine
Summary: Nine years later, Klaus meets an unknown  informant in a cafe, who turns out to not be so unknown after all.





	As the sadness of parting proves

**Author's Note:**

> From a tumblr prompt by Mozartsgirl. Title from “Dark Eyed Molly” by Achie Fisher. “Deep and dark are my true love’s eyes...”

He recognizes her immediately.

You would think he’d have to consider it for at least a moment, search in his head—he only knew her for a few days, so many years ago. But everything from that time is imprinted on his brain as indelibly as ink on a page.

He sees her face first, and the signature triangle glasses next, and then, before he had time to hope that maybe he was in the cafe to meet someone else, the copy of The Phantom Tollbooth sitting on the table in front of her. 

He lifts his eyes from the book, and finds her already looking at him.

Klaus crosses the nearly deserted restaurant and sits down at the table pushed up against the back wall. “Hello Fiona,” he says.

“Hello Klaus,” Fiona says.

“You don’t look surprised to see me,” Klaus observes. Fiona shrugs. Klaus doesn’t know whether he should find it comforting or unnerving that the Widdershins might have found some way to keep tabs on them. There are so few people in the world now who would notice their absence if they all just vanished into smoke one day, and yet...

Unbidden, he thinks of the dark eyes of her brother, watching them at the mill, the apartment building, everywhere else, just another pair of the eyes they feared would follow them from the first day in that terrible house. 

Klaus shakes his head minutely to dispel the thought and refocuses his gaze on the dark eyed girl in front of him.

Fiona lifts a satchel off the ground and onto the table, and draws out a manila folder. She hands it across the table. Klaus takes it and tucks it into his bag without opening it.

“VFD hasn’t found you yet?” she says, and Klaus shakes his head.

“They’re not trying quite as hard as they used to,” he says. “I think after resisting ‘volunteering’ for a few years, the fire fighters write you off as fire starters,” he says, smiling wearily. “Maybe we are. Some of the fire starters are still looking for us, and I’m sure we’re on the hit list of some of the people in between.” 

“You haven’t heard anything about Olaf?” she says, and even all this time later, the name makes his pulse speed up. He doesn’t think he manages to totally conceal his wince.

“Why?” he snaps, before he can stop himself. “Is Fernald planning a reunion?”

The look Fiona gives him is both shaming and, he feels, a little unfair.

“Sorry,” he says anyway. He licks his lips, swallows. “Olaf is dead,” he says.

Sometimes, even now, he lies in bed at night and says that to himself, over and over. Olaf is dead. They will never round a corner and see his face again. He can’t hurt them any more.

Fiona is clearly waiting for elaboration, but Klaus keeps his mouth clamped shut, so after a few moments, she nods.

“Okay,” she says. And then, “Good.” And that isn’t right either, but he doesn’t have the energy to explain why.

“We have a kid,” he says instead, which he certainly hadn’t meant to mention. Fiona’s eyebrows leap, and Klaus shakes his head.

“Had one. I mean, she’s not— her mother— We adopted her,” he explains. “Not long after… She’s nine now.”

Fiona smiles. “What’s her name?”

“Bea,” he answers. “Beatrice.” He swallows. “She’s… we got separated. We haven’t seen her in years.” 

Fiona has a hand over her mouth in horror. “Klaus, that’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

He gestures to the bag by his chair. “That’s the information you brought me. We’re hoping it’s a lead that might help us find her.” He didn’t mean to say any of this, he doesn’t want her to know this, he wishes he could take the words back into his mouth because the young woman sitting across from him looking at him with pity has an enemy’s eyes.

It’s the kind of thing VFD does, put people into categories, define them by their families. He’s ashamed to think it, but that doesn’t make the thought go away.

“I think,” he says, “I think I would do almost anything to get her back,” he says. “To make sure that not a moment more of her life has the fear and uncertainty mine and my sisters’ has had.” His eyes are burning and he hates that he’s saying this, that he feels the need to explain this, and he hates that he sees Fernald’s eyes in her face, and he hates—

“I hate that she doesn’t have her family,” he says. His voice is breaking. “I just want her to be safe and have her family and not have to worry about the treachery of the world until she’s much older.”

“That’s what Fernald used to say about me,” she says, smiling sadly. “He still says it sometimes, even though it’s a little too late to protect me.”

It’s too much. It’s more than Klaus can take.

“Your brother is part of the treachery of the world!” he bursts. There are a few other people in the cafe, so he doesn’t shout. It comes out as a hiss, an angry spit of venom. “He was part of our fear. I still have nightmares about him and all the rest of them, I still do. He helped the people who orphaned Bea! Who knows if—“

Fiona is trembling. She looks like she wants to walk right out of the cafe.

“Don’t talk about him like that in front of me,” she says. “He’s not a wicked person.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Klaus says. He is thinking of all the things he has done in his life to survive, all the things he would still do to protect his sisters or to bring Bea home safely. He doesn’t know how to explain what he is thinking of. “It doesn’t matter that you’re not a wicked person if you do wicked things.” He is tired. All the fight has gone out of him as quickly as it came.

They are silent for a long minute.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he means it. There was so little that was good in that time, but for a short while, this girl had been part of it, with her grin and her glasses and her mycological library, making a thirteen year old boy’s heart beat faster.

She’d broken that heart, of course. But doesn’t everything, eventually?

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and Fiona nods tightly. He grasps the handles of his bag and stands. “Thank you for your help.”

“I hope you find Bea,” she says. “Maybe I’ll get to meet her someday.”

“Maybe,” Klaus says. If it’s up to him, she never will. “Goodbye, Fiona.”

Goodbye, Klaus.”

She looks at him with her dark eyes until Klaus turns around. He walks out of the cafe without looking behind him, and out into the drizzling rain.


End file.
